Conspiracy Theorists vs Home grown Incompetence and Good News vs Bad News for GAA and Unionists.

How GAA got caught up in game of political football over Casement

Patrick Murphy, Irish News, September 21st, 2024

IT IS an interesting reflection on Stormont’s priorities that Casement Park is more important than education, poverty, infrastructure or the shipyard. The Programme for Government (PfG) promises “progress” on Casement’s redevelopment, but ignores the other four issues.

Sinn Féin even raised a ‘matter of the day’ motion in the assembly, criticising the British government’s failure to provide an unknown amount of money for Casement. There have been no similar motions condemning the need for food banks in west Belfast.

However, by failing to fund a stadium in time for a professional soccer tournament, Britain has once again been portrayed as inflicting eternal injustice on the Irish nation. First the Famine, now Casement Park.

The real problem in this case was that the GAA allowed itself to be caught up in a game of politics, a sport in which there are no rules. In the end it lost the match, because Casement Park became a political football. The GAA’s mistake was not to build a 15,000-20,000 capacity stadium for Antrim GAA in 2011. That would have been similar in size to GAA stadiums in Newry, Armagh and Omagh.

Even allowing for Davy Fitz’s appointment as Antrim hurling manager, most Antrim football and hurling matches are unlikely to attract more than 10,000 spectators. Instead the GAA opted for a vanity project: a 38,000-capacity Ulster GAA stadium, similar to Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which left the Cork County Board with a €30 million debt. Probably only one match a year (and not every year) would require that capacity in Ulster. Like Croke Park for six months of the year, Casement would have become a concert venue for almost the entire year.

Even building a 25,000-capacity stadium for Ulster GAA would have been a feasible project. However, when local residents reasonably objected to the stadium’s proposed size, the GAA was reluctant to relent.

It is not clear if it sought, or was offered, political support from Sinn Féin and the Dublin government, but from then onwards Casement Park became a political crusade.

The British government has said it will not provide the funding to allow Casement Park in west Belfast to be redeveloped in time to host games in the Euro 2028 tournament

In the assembly on Monday, Sinn Féin said: “We will not be denied.” They did not say “the GAA will not be denied”. They said “we”. Casement has become a Sinn Féin project. Despite that claim, two Sinn Féin ministers failed to raise Casement’s funding at a meeting with the British chancellor last week. The following day Britain abandoned the project. Political posturing does not always reflect private dealings.

Sinn Féin did something similar with the Irish language. It campaigned for an Irish language act, even making it a condition for re-entering Stormont after its three-year collapse of the institutions. Despite that, Conradh na Gaeilge this week described as “scandalous and disgraceful” the executive’s recent draft PfG, which made no mention of a language strategy, or the appointment of an Irish language commissioner.

“ The GAA’s mistake was not to build a 15,000-20,000 capacity stadium for Antrim GAA in 2011 ”

As de Valera recognised, the politicisation of Irish culture not only wins votes, it distracts from other government policies.

Taoiseach Simon Harris claimed this week that we need Casement. In the current Dáil term he will seek to remove the current rules protecting Irish neutrality.

It is not clear who thought of building Casement Park for a soccer tournament. However, locating a Gaelic stadium in Sinn Féin’s back yard for soccer was certainly political in intent.

Amateur soccer is a fine sport. Professional soccer is not a sport, it is a business, operated in England, for example, by capitalist enterprises from Saudi Arabia to Thailand. That is the opposite of the amateur ethos of the GAA and hardly a reason for building a GAA stadium.

The British played politics with Casement better than most. Hilary Benn’s withdrawal of promised funding for Casement was criticised for coming late on a Friday. However, the real significance of his timing was that two days previously he announced a public inquiry into Pat

Finucane’s murder. That allowed him to pave the way for bad news on Casement and to use that bad news to bury more immoral news: his government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into the murder of GAA stalwart Sean Brown.

If the British had found enough money for Casement, the Finucane family might not have got their public inquiry.

So the GAA has been led up the garden path by politicians, both British and Irish. It is a noble organisation which many would reasonably suggest deserved better.

However, by straying into politics you do not get what you deserve. You get what politicians deserve and that is why Casement Park remains a derelict site.

Stormont's vaccination bungling is dangerous, but not because of conspiracy theorists

Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, November 21st, 2024

NI GOVERNMENT'S OWN CONSULTATION DOCUMENT IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY, THE POLICY COULD NEVER WORK, AND IT WAS ALWAYS ULTIMATELY GOING TO BE DROPPED ONCE IT WAS PROPERLY CONSIDERED — SO WHY WERE CLAIMS ABOUT COMPULSORY VACCINATION ALLOWED TO FESTER ALL SUMMER?

The front page of yesterday's Belfast Telegraph conveyed a story which indicates how political debate is shifting in ways even many politicians don't yet understand.

The article reported that Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has emphasised that he's not in favour of forced vaccination. To many people, this will have been baffling: why would anyone be suggesting forced vaccination?

Yet to tens — maybe hundreds — of thousands of people, some far beyond Northern Ireland, this was a victory, because it was their pressure which had led to a poorly considered proposal's abandonment.

This story has its roots in a long consultation document published by the Department of Health in July in which it made a series of proposals for a new public health bill. It was one of many actions of the new Executive to catch up on work which had built up while devolution was down and it came just as MLAs were about to go on holiday.

There were no heated Assembly debates about this, almost no coverage in the media, and the consultation is one of the earliest stages of drawing up legislation, so there were months, perhaps years, in which to refine what will ultimately become law.

DUP MLA Paul Frew was campaigning against it (although his party never even issued a press release about it) and Aontu's Gemma Brolly was similarly criticising what was being done, saying that the language in the document was “born of Orwell”.

But none of this constituted the sort of pressure normally required to force a government U-turn.

So why did Mr Nesbitt publicly distance himself from part of the very document he'd published two months ago?

The minister's statement came a few hours after I'd submitted questions to his department about what appeared to be a seriously flawed policy.

Whether or not those questions played any part in his decision, the far bigger reason was a public backlash which had grown online over recent weeks. Social media, WhatsApp groups and word of mouth spread alarm at some of what was proposed.

Someone even created a website to oppose the coming bill. This new power base of online activists — tapping into the network of anti-vax groups and conspiracy theorists but extending far beyond them — was ultimately what forced change.

Some of the fears were entirely rational and well-founded; others were based on profound ignorance of both the existing law and the history of repressive measures imposed for centuries to contain pestilence.

Our ancestors would have recognised many of the measures proposed in the document, but most of us are sufficiently fortunate to have first encountered a pandemic in 2020 and so such restrictions seemed unprecedented.

One thing our ancestors wouldn't have recognised, however, was the proposal to give the department power to make regulations which “require a person to be vaccinated or to receive other prophylactic [something intended to prevent disease] treatment”.

Precisely what this meant wasn't spelt out, nor was the rationale for it. The most modest interpretation of those words would be a requirement on those in certain jobs such as healthcare to be vaccinated or they would lose their jobs.

Even that is enormously controversial and could be counterproductive.

There are situations in which vaccination is necessary, such as when travelling to certain countries. But requiring this for employment is far harder to justify.

Would it only extend to new health service staff? Could it legally extend to existing employees? If many existing staff refused to be vaccinated and were sacked, could the health system survive?

None of these questions were addressed. But there was another, far more sweeping possible meaning to the department's poorly defined words: that it was proposing the entire population should be compulsorily vaccinated.

It was this belief which fuelled the campaign against the proposal and which makes the department's handling of this disastrous in fuelling distrust of government.

Even if forced vaccination of the entire population was desirable, it would be entirely unworkable.

I'd asked the department on Wednesday evening if it had consulted the PSNI on whether it could provide the manpower to assist health workers in force-vaccinating tens or hundreds of thousands of people. It didn't respond.

The idea of holding people down to be injected is dystopian. If this wasn't what was ever intended — and it probably wasn't — then the department needed to be absolutely clear about what was planned.

For the Department of Health, of all departments, to fail to grasp the visceral fear of vaccination among a section of the population is remarkable. How did it not see that such an idea would be seized upon by conspiracy theorists, some of whom are openly cashing in on pushing ever more outlandish theories about dark forces seeking to control the population?

Here was something which, to many people who abhor such charlatans, was understandably alarming.

Moreover, the department's documentation is internally contradictory.

The consultation states that it would prohibit any regulations which force someone to undergo medical treatment. But it then defined that term by saying “medical treatment does not include vaccination and other prophylactic treatment”.

This is obviously ludicrous. As a matter of common sense, vaccination is a medical treatment and was defined as such in the Covid regulations.

The department's documents aren't even consistent on the point. In the accompanying equality impact assessment, the department states the opposite, saying that “medical treatment includes vaccination and other prophylactic treatment”.

I asked the department which of those was its position. There had been no response.

The equality impact assessment itself admitted that “there may be a perceived breach of [human rights] in the absence of a definitive law that prohibits forced vaccinations” and went on to say that the “policy intent” was to have a provision prohibiting a requirement to undergo medical treatment.

The position is so confused between the documents that it's impossible to be sure what the department wants to do.

Paul Moore, a former Assembly clerk, was seriously concerned by what he read in the document.

He'd been dismayed at how a supine Assembly sometimes didn't even debate Covid restrictions until after they'd passed — something possible because the emergency legislation allowed the minister to make law which came into force before a Stormont vote.

The consultation document states: “It is proposed that public health protection regulations may amend any statutory provision.” At face value, that is a sweeping power to amend nearly any law — and yet again there is no explanation.

Mr Moore expressed concern at “the apparent desire to extend the department's powers to be able to amend any other legislation, including primary legislation, through regulations” — effectively bypassing the legislature at that point.

He said he also had concerns about the concentration of such power in one department — although even where a power nominally rests with a department, it can only be exercised by the entire Executive if it is cross-cutting or controversial, as would be the case here.

Mr Moore's concern speaks to the general lack of confidence in the Stormont system. If this is how someone who worked within that system feels, it's easy to imagine how others with scant knowledge of government would view this.

It is sensible that Mr Nesbitt has belatedly moved to rule out mandatory vaccination. But that's now damage limitation. The rest of the bill — when it comes — is now open to a host of conspiracy theories.

The proposed bill would allow the government to force someone to submit to medical examination, to be detained in hospital, to be kept in isolation, to be disinfected, to be forced to wear protective clothing, to answer questions about their health, to have their health monitored, to have their movements restricted and to be stopped from working.

To those of a conspiratorial mindset, this is a terrifying example of state control.

In truth, many of the fears around this aren't what they seem for a very simple reason: most of these powers already exist and, in some cases, are being restricted by this bill rather than widened.

Harsh restrictions against infectious disease have existed for more than 1,000 years. During a serious outbreak of plague in the sixth century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian imposed isolation for people and food coming to Constantinople from North Africa.

In the 12th century, sanitary cordons involved lines which couldn't be crossed on pain of death.

Attempts to contain the bubonic plague included quarantine and isolation of the infected, enforced by armed guards.

The 1918 flu pandemic saw schools, churches and other places of public gathering shut.

There has long been an acceptance that in a time of plague the normal rights of the individual can be subsumed to the greater public good, even if the precise nature and extent of the restrictions may vary.

The Public Health Act 1936 gave a court powers to order that an infectious patient be taken to hospital and be “detained”.

It gave sweeping powers for dealing with sailors suffering from tuberculosis, allowing a minister to impose restrictions “as appear to the minister to be necessary or appropriate” and banned wakes in the presence of the dead body of someone with a notifiable disease.

The 1967 Public Health Act now in force similarly contains sweeping emergency powers. It allows the department to make regulations for “the detention of vessels or aircraft and of persons on board them” and to “enter any premises” to enforce restrictions.

It contains powers whereby if a magistrate has “reason to believe” a person is carrying a notifiable disease and it is in the public interest to have them medically examined, “the magistrate may order that person to undergo a medical investigation”.

It allows a magistrate to order someone's detention in hospital; bans anyone carrying a notifiable disease from working if there is “risk of spreading the disease”; allows the director of public health to ban an infectious child from attending school; bans those with notifiable diseases from using libraries; prevents someone from being in the same room as the body of a person who died from a notifiable disease; and gives the director of public health the power to order the burial or cremation of the body.

The list of notifiable diseases which allows these powers to be used includes chicken pox and food poisoning.

By its very nature, emergency legislation contains provisions which in other times would lead to revolt.

The proposal here is not to utilise this legislation now, but to have it ready for activation in a crisis — just as there is legislation which allows for severe restrictions in a time of war.

Serious restrictions on human liberty require careful consideration. It is good that this legislation is coming now in a period when we have recently experienced a pandemic but are able to thoroughly debate and consider what is appropriate without the urgent need to take a decision now as death sweeps towards us.

Some of the criticism of this process fails to recognise that a really Machiavellian government wouldn't seek to pass this legislation now when it could be debated and refined. A malevolent government would have a bill of this sort drafted and ready to be introduced as a pandemic approached.

In such circumstances, most people would accept almost anything if they thought it might help save their life.

Thus the very fact that this legislation is being crafted in the normal way, with an extensive public consultation, would show to the keen observer that this isn't the dark plot some are suggesting.

Rather than some globalist conspiracy or dictatorial power grab, this is a more prosaic example of good old Stormont incompetence. Their own document is self-contradictory, the policy could never work, and it was always ultimately going to be dropped once it was properly considered.

But by even floating it, the conspiracy theorists have been reinforced in their belief that government yearns for complete control of their bodies, as well as their lives, and that is itself dangerous.

A message of hope for East Belfast GAA from club that knows its pain

Liam Tunny, Belfast Telegraph, September 21st, 2024

Glengormley GFC, once described as the “most attacked sports club in Ireland”, has expressed solidarity with East Belfast GAA amid an ongoing campaign of sectarian intimidation. Its home ground at Henry Jones Playing Fields on the outskirts of Castlereagh has been targeted by loyalists since the club formed in 2020.

East Belfast GAA has an explicit cross-community ethos, with its motto carrying the word “together” in English, Irish and Ulster-Scots. Devices left at the playing fields have sparked security alerts that have caused widespread disruption in the area, including to a local primary school and nearby daycare centre for kids.

The attacks intensified this week, with two separate incidents. Yesterday there were around a dozen cars in the car park. A Union flag fixed to a telegraph pole next to the entrance flapped in the wind.

A scattering of people were dotted around the playing fields. On one end of the pitch, two men kicked a ball around. At the other end, a group of children did the same.

Naomh Éanna (St Enda's) GAC faced an even more intense campaign of intimidation during the Troubles. Between the 1970s and 1990s the clubhouse was burned to the ground 13 times. The pitch was regularly strewn with broken glass, and the goalposts were sawn down on a number of occasions.

Five club members were murdered by loyalist terrorists, including president Seán Fox in 1993, senior manager Gerry Devlin in 1997, and 19-year-old player Gerard Lawlor in 2002.

Officials have been in contact with their colleagues across the city to offer their support. “Our hearts break for East Belfast GAA, we have every sympathy for what they are going through, having experienced similar vicious attacks ourselves,” the club said.

“Thankfully, we always kept rebuilding and maintaining our focus on the promotion of our games and culture and today we find ourselves in the strongest position in our history.

“We have communicated privately with the officers of East Belfast GAA and have offered our support and sympathy for their current experience.

“We are absolutely certain that the club will get through this and will continue its exceptional growth and development.”

Belfast City Council has started work to increase security at Henry Jones. The sectarian campaign has been condemned by all sides.

East Belfast MP and DUP leader Gavin Robinson has called on those behind it to “catch a grip”.

Justice Minister Naomi Long, an MLA for the area, described the situation as “completely unacceptable”.

Sinn Féin's Deirdre Hargey said the security alerts were “despicable attempts to intimidate children and adults playing sport”.

SDLP councillor Séamas de Faoite said it was “utterly contemptable”, with the Green Party's Brian Smyth saying the intimidation “won't work”.

While condemning the intimidation, TUV councillor Ron McDowell said he had concerns about the GAA's “terror links”.

“Whilst those obstacles remain, it's going to be really, really difficult for the GAA to set up camp anywhere in what's a predominantly unionist area,” he added.

Rickety old jalopy of unionism needs urgent repair or it's downhill all the way

Gail Walker, Belfast Telegraph, September 21st, 2024

It seems that for all of my lifetime it's been a time for reviewing unionism but I'm still waiting for it to happen. Months after yet another election showing shrinking returns, there appears no movement anywhere.

Something bad has happened to unionism — again. When is the next “bad thing” due to happen? The next Assembly election in 2027? The next Westminster election in 2029? Some manner of border poll interrupting that sequence?

There is no sense of urgency whatsoever among those who would have us remain in the United Kingdom.

Writing in The Critic magazine this week, former DUP special adviser Lee Reynolds delivers a forensic analysis of the party's condition and makes salient points as to how it might manoeuvre out of it. The headline grabber is that it's become such a “negative brand”, it needs to redefine itself and come up with a new name.

He did find some optimism in the new diversity of unionist opinion at Westminster — the TUV's Jim Allister, UUP's Robin Swann and Independent Unionist Alex Easton.

But that's an illusion. Allister and Swann are implacable opponents of the DUP; Easton actually quit the party. If anything, it represents fragmentation rather than diversity.

Life comes at the DUP fast. They returned five MPs. Only seven years ago they had 10. As Reynolds put it: “The 2024 Westminster campaign failed. It was 'Apocalypse Almost'. The DUP was 1,400 votes away from only three MPs. The campaign prioritised three seats. The party lost two of them and another it had not expected.”

Two of their MPs — Gregory Campbell, Sammy Wilson — limped back on extremely slim majorities and will struggle next time round. These are all heavy-hitters coming to the end of the road.

Reynolds gets into the weeds of political organisation, of future planning, of succession building, of party structure. One could add electoral strategies at the grassroots level and how to connect local representation with the Assembly and Westminster and beyond.

But none of it is going to happen. The DUP appears simply incapable of those reflections.

I've sat in rooms where some of the foremost political PR brains in the world have presented sophisticated, thought-provoking presentations to unionist politicians and apparatchiks only to be met with “thank you, very interesting, but you don't really understand”.

The rickety old jalopy that is unionism will bounce along the road for a few more years with various people dropping off along the way. Some younger people will hang on for dear life around a few more corners before the mudguard comes off in their hand and they're left lying in the road as well.

The real issues are simple — unionist people are demoralised and I mean ordinary people. They feel ignored and let down. The admission during the election that the DUP had 'over-sold' the protocol came as a blow to those who actually believed what they were told by the leadership and embraced the return of the institutions.

That needs fixed. That can't sit as an aside during an interview and not be revisited. It will require humility and repair. That doesn't mean bringing down the institutions. It does mean the DUP leadership mending its relationship with its electorate.

And just what is the DUP's vision for Northern Ireland, say, in 2050? That's 25 years away.

If it's still here, what sort of democracy will we be enjoying at that stage? What standard of living? What society will we have built? These are questions specifically to the DUP.

Right now, there needs to be visibility for unionism. This isn't more demonstrations, more flags up lampposts. This is presence in other devolved administrations and capitals and obviously in Dublin.

There must be these visible communication points — portals for positive opinion about Northern Ireland and its place and for relationship building.

There needs to be a cohort of friends developed on the island of Ireland — opinion-formers, business leaders, groups with common interests and connections, also political parties.

Is the DUP capable of these initiatives? The worst characteristic of the Ulster temperament — regardless of tribe or perspective — is “it'll do rightly”.

It has been the mantra of the DUP for a decade.

And doing nothing is only going to get easier for the old jalopy from here on in because it's all downhill.

You might even be able to turn off the engine and save a bit of petrol now and again by freewheeling — but it's not going to be pretty at the bottom.

There are those in the unionist electorate who regard the public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane as further evidence of a one-sided process — some unionist politicians will say as much themselves.

I commend the Finucane family for their tenacious campaigning to get to this point. I also suspect that if I asked to see all the letters written by unionist politicians demanding a public inquiry into any number of killings, a few slips of paper might be all there is. Every family bereaved through the Troubles deserves to be told everything about the killing of their loved ones.

Can anyone identify a menu of 10 reasons why the union is a 'good thing'? Unionist parties themselves haven't been shoving leaflets through doors showcasing the offering.

But in fact the strongest argument is: look out your window. It's very nearly a normal day in a normal place.

Most people most of the time just want that to be the case. A few things less to be stressed about, to be able to get on with people, which of course is what ordinary unionists are doing every day.

They'd just like to see that outreach replicated in a more meaningful way by their politicians.

It may sound odd, but the record shows there are nationalists who will vote for a status quo. But too many within unionism give the impression that a union reliant on such pragmatic buy-in isn't a union worth having. At least that what my nationalist friends tell me.

Political unionism needs to make clear it wants 'everybody in', starting now — and that it will start in this village, this town, this city, right now.

For this reason Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O'Neill have demonstrated a lockstep which is extremely gratifying. All of that is about reducing hostility and beginning to think about reconciliation and what it might look like.

The DUP has to own reconciliation — and move it forward. Democracy cannot be side-stepped. Polls and elections will happen and people will vote and that will drive the future. The only strategy is getting ahead of the curve rather than chugging along and breaking down behind.

All of that is about attitude. If you get that attitude right, the structures, the arguments, the actions, the votes, follow naturally. Gavin Robinson is young enough and new enough to be given a chance as the party leader.

But attitude needs bucked up very quickly. If it's not going to happen, if that is too much for unionism, for the DUP, if we won't hear from them until the spring of 2027, then they would be better packing it in and letting someone else have a go.

Rather than managing the retirement of their MPs to coincide with the old jalopy going into the breakers yard.